Genius Archer’s Streaming - Chapter 278

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Genius Archer’s Streaming Season 1 Spin-off Episode 14
4. The Witch (3)
“…What?”
Ran, standing beside me, asks again.
“Oh, no. I was just talking to myself.”
“Did that letter come from Laurent?”
“Probably.”
I answer that way and move between the soldiers, collecting arrows.
It didn’t take long to persuade them that my shots were better than theirs.
[Time Remaining]
[00:09:12]
The letter’s author told me to survive for 10 minutes. Just over 1 minute has already passed.
Around that time, strange signs begin to emerge.
Boom…! Boom…!
Violent impacts begin coming from the basement entrance, which was sealed shut.
It’s about to break through.
‘Is the exit still far away?’
The mercenaries are still busily searching for an exit that supposedly exists somewhere in this place.
Then…
“Hey! L-Leader! The exit…!”
Screech.
The soldiers shove a heavy display case aside, shouting with excitement.
“We found it….”
Boom…!
As the display case collapses, the exit revealed itself exactly as the mercenary company had been briefed beforehand.
The only difference was that the iron door had melted as if welded, making it absolutely impossible to open.
“….”
Silence fell for a moment.
‘So that’s why I was told to survive for 10 minutes.’
Only then did I properly understand the letter’s contents, while the remaining mercenaries stared at each other, completely bewildered.
“Who left that intelligence report?”
One of the mercenaries shouted angrily.
“Didn’t he deceive us!”
The mercenaries began quarreling among themselves.
Ran grabbed my sleeve.
“Almond….”
“It’s fine.”
I tell Ran not to worry.
“There’s a way.”
“A way…?”
Ran surveys the underground factory and speaks again. It’s sealed off on all sides except for a small window far above—so high that I couldn’t possibly reach it.
When the lights go out, this place will surely be swallowed by darkness. I’ve essentially walked into an underground prison of my own volition.
Thump.
Ran collapses to the ground.
“Haa… haa…”
He grips his own chest, breathing heavily and ragged.
“Ran?”
“M-my heart…”
The terror he felt in the underground prison is resurfacing. A trauma, manifesting anew.
“Ran.”
“A P-Potion…”
“A Potion?”
He’s asking for a Potion.
“N-no, that won’t do.”
Almond refused.
Click.
Yet Ran’s hand grips tightly around his knee.
“P-please, hurry. A small amount won’t matter, will it? Potions have real effects.”
What am I supposed to do? He’s asking for it, so I suppose giving it to him is the right call.
“Here.”
Gulp. Gulp.
While Ran recovers his composure with the Potion…
[Time Remaining]
[00:08:01]
The remaining time drops into the seven-minute range.
Nothing has happened until now, but…
That’s only been the case so far.
“Stop.”
As the Leader’s voice rings out, the mercenaries who were fighting each other cease their movements.
“We’ll judge the intelligence failure later. Prepare for battle now.”
Boom.
The direction the Leader points is upward—the sealed entrance to the underground factory.
A heavy sound has been echoing from there for a while now.
Kuuung…!
It’s finally time for it to break through.
Ting… tiiiring…
The sound of metal fragments rolling across the floor.
-Something big is coming…!
-Hahahaha boss fight
-Now it really begins
Catching a glimpse of the viewers’ comments, I prepared myself for combat as well.
The blade sang as it was drawn.
The Leader unsheathed her sword and spoke.
“If we resist desperately enough, we can break through to an escape route.”
It felt presumptuous to interject into words meant to bolster morale, but I had no choice but to do so.
“No. You just need to hold your ground here.”
“…What?”
“I’ve called for reinforcements.”
Murmur. Murmur.
The mercenaries whispered with bewildered expressions.
The Leader tilted her head and asked again.
“Can that reinforcement… save all of us?”
I nodded without any hesitation.
“Yes.”
CRASH!
The sound of the door shattering echoed through the space.
The broken iron door tumbled down the stairs with a deafening clatter.
“This… this can’t be….”
“It’s coming!”
“Damn it…!”
BZZZZZZZZT…!
Pure white light erupted from above. The intensity was such that it pierced through solid matter itself, its wavelengths leaking outward.
CRASH──
That light obliterated the entire staircase, tore through the floor, and landed precisely before Ran and me.
──BZZT! THUD!
Text materialized above the mass of light.
[Seer – Nemesis]
This one looked like the boss.
“Ahahahahaha!”
At first glance, it was a lively laugh, but madness resonated within it.
The light gradually faded, and a human form emerged.
“You fools. Did you really think you could just barge in here like that?!”
It was a man whose hair glowed like white lightning. No—not just his hair, but all the hair on his body, including his eyebrows, radiated with luminescence.
“Now what will you do~~!? I’ve destroyed the stairs completely! Unless you can fly like birds, you’re all dead where you stand!?”
His fierce, upturned eyes revealed him to be no ordinary figure.
Snap!
He extended his finger.
The mercenaries flinched in unison, aiming their crossbows and bows.
Yet his finger merely swayed left and right, doing nothing at all.
“Tsk tsk. Intelligence isn’t exclusive to you lot~”
“It’s a deception.”
“Huh~?”
A voice so monotone it felt dull cut through his words. It was the Leader.
“It’s a deception. Don’t believe it.”
A confident answer that burst forth as if she had been waiting for this moment.
Nemesis gestured at the Leader with his chin, questioning her certainty.
“Unless they’re fools who would deliberately reveal they have intelligence. Obviously it’s a lie. And…”
Crackle, crackle…!
Mana began to gather in the Leader’s bow.
A clear, brilliant blue mana.
‘…What?’
Almond’s mouth fell open in shock.
The Leader drew back her bowstring and spoke to Nemesis.
“…I don’t trust Contractors.”
Boom, boom, boom, boom──
The Leader’s arrow, brimming with terrifying magical power, pierced right through Nemesis.
Yes, it pierced through him. To put it nicely, it went clean through; to put it harshly, it simply passed by.
──Crash!
The Leader’s arrow embedded itself in the wall behind Nemesis.
“Ah, ah, ahahahahaha!”
Nemesis continued laughing brightly from the same spot.
“This is fun! Thinking something like that would work on me!”
Woooosh!
Nemesis let out a strange cry and transformed into light once more.
In that form, he charged at the mercenary band and tore through their formation.
──Shwaaaack!
“Aaaagh!”
“Ugh!”
“Gah…!”
Three or four mercenaries collapsed as if electrocuted by the light.
The Leader fired her bow in rapid succession.
But again, they all passed through.
My attacks were no different.
Yet there was one attack that actually connected.
…Boom!
“?!”
Nemesis turned around in disbelief at the source—it was Ran.
“…W-why is a Pure White Apostle here?”
Ran completely ignored that remark and spoke to me.
“My purity and his purity are identical, so my attack connects.”
“…?”
“Cover me.”
I see.
This game had become one where I protected Ran.
[Time Remaining]
[00:06:32]
About six minutes left.
I just had to hold out for six minutes.
“Got it.”
But the moment I thought—cover him from what when there’s only one opponent?
Crackle, crackle, crackle!!!
Nemesis suddenly began to glow, and countless spirit-like entities materialized.
They felt similar to the Ghostly Soldiers I’d seen before, but these ones had much brighter coloration.
“Annihilate them all!”
At Nemesis’s roar, his body bent backward at nearly a 120-degree angle, and all his summoned creatures simultaneously drew their swords.
Whoosh!
They charged forward.
My attacks would work on these creatures, I thought, and I began firing arrows at them.
‘Where’s their weak point?’
Not knowing where their weakness was, I fired eight arrows, distributing them evenly across one of them.
“Ugh…!”
From the summoned creature’s reaction, I realized there was a ‘core’ right in the center of these things.
“There’s a core in the middle!”
After relaying this information to the mercenary unit, I began firing at the summoned creatures in earnest.
Bang! Bang, bang!
‘Two shots.’
Annoyingly, even when I hit the core, they didn’t die in one hit—I needed two shots to take them down.
Troublesome creatures indeed.
But I didn’t falter, eliminating every summoned creature that tried to approach Ran.
Thud! Thud!
‘Two down.’
I’d already sent two of them.
‘Three, four….’
There had been about a dozen or so summoned, and already four had vanished. Nearly half.
‘Five.’
It didn’t take long for the count to reach five.
Thud! Thud!
Two more arrows found their cores in succession.
‘Six.’
The summoned creatures fell one after another like dominoes. The mercenaries stared at me in shock.
Nemesis was fully occupied with blocking Ran’s attacks.
He wielded that shield Daria had used before.
But the Ran before him now was not the Ran from back then.
Ran unleashed a relentless barrage, forcing him to think of nothing but deploying his shield.
Nemesis’s expression twisted in distress as he briefly attempted to summon his minions, only to become utterly dismayed.
“W-what?! Already?!”
All the summoned creatures he had created had vanished.
He briefly lowered his shield and summoned new minions, but the result was identical.
Poof—!
No, it was worse—they died far more easily and in greater numbers.
In the end, he had merely wasted pure white mana.
Nemesis’s expression began to roil with fury.
“How INFURIATING! You WORMS!!!”
Boom—!
Crimson lightning swept across all directions as his form ascended into the air.
His pristine white mana had transformed into blazing red.
‘Phase 2’
He had entered Phase 2.
[Time Remaining]
[00:04:59]
Exactly five minutes left.

* * *
-Wow, look at how fast we’re moving into Phase 2 lol
Enduring for 10 minutes like this is actually disadvantageous ㅠㅠㅠ
-???: Almond, stop being so good! (sincerely)
-He’s so good at this that it’s actually making it harder lol
Damn.
I realized I was in a predicament.
‘I shouldn’t be clearing things this quickly…’
By eliminating the summoned creatures too fast, it seemed I had only provoked Nemesis’s power further.
I had been trying to kill him while forgetting the premise that I needed to endure for 10 minutes.
However, it appeared that actually killing him was nearly impossible.
“Kyahahahahaha!”
As he burst into wild laughter and swung his arm, a crimson lightning bolt swept across the entire factory.
Boom!
The Red Mercenary Company collapsed like dominoes.
Even the Leader was swept away by the impact without managing to do anything properly.
‘An omnidirectional attack?’
With a single swing of his arm, he had attacked in all directions. This wasn’t the kind of enemy I could defeat.
Among all this, only I and Ran managed to barely endure.
“Are… are you alright…?”
A surge of emotion.
It was thanks to Ran, who blocked it while spilling blood.
He had deployed all of his pure white mana as a shield to block the attack.
As his mana was nearly depleted, blood trickled continuously from his mouth.
“Kyahahahahaha!”
It seemed the next attack was coming.
Crackle…!
Crimson mana was gathering abundantly.
He swung his arm.
Boom!
The remaining Red Mercenary Company members all fell for certain this time, and blood now gushed from Ran’s nose as well.
“Ugh…”
Ran clenched his teeth and stifled his scream.
I checked the time.
[Time Remaining]
[00:03:52]
Only about a minute had passed.
‘There has to be a way.’
I had to find a way.
Simply enduring like this made no sense.
“Kyahahaha! Just you two left~?”
Nemesis finally turned his attention to us. He would attack differently than before.
Could I actually block that? With omnidirectional attacks, there was nowhere to escape.
‘It won’t be omnidirectional every time.’
In a game, for a boss monster no less… it made no sense if every attack was unavoidable.
‘This must be a mechanism to eliminate the mercenaries’ support.’
The last two attacks had swept away only the mercenaries.
The game’s intent was probably to have Ran and me endure through our strength alone.
No—to have the Player endure through their strength alone.
“Ran.”
“Yes.”
“How many times can you hold out?”
Now it was just Ran and me.
“…Perhaps two or three times at most.”
He seemed to be overestimating, but I had no choice but to bet on his answer.
“Then… follow me!”
Tap!
I kicked off the ground and sprinted toward somewhere.
“Huh? Y-yes…!”

* * *
[Beginner’s Tip: Contractors can participate in the Battlefield in an immortal state by receiving the power of the Sanctum. In a Battlefield free from the fear of death, display your skills to the fullest and seize power and glory! We also provide unlimited Potions to ease your suffering!]

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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